275. Why Goal Setting Fails and 3 Steps to Fix It

Perry Marshall Full Conversation: https://youtu.be/yWOj5Z_KI7w 
Brian Tracy Full Conversation: https://youtu.be/oV9jdzGx0GY
James Clear Full Conversation:  https://youtu.be/gFw3qjGmvTI 
Srini Pillay: https://youtu.be/62VYBsnrcpE 
Atomic Habit Book:  https://amzn.to/4miwxiC 

Why do most goal-setting strategies fail? In this video, Ash Roy reveals the three biggest traps that hold you back and shares simple, science-backed shifts to help you achieve more by focusing on less. Discover how to set goals that actually work, build powerful habits, and design an environment for success. Watch now to transform your approach to goal setting!

Timestamps: 
00:00 — Introduction: Why most successful entrepreneurs have fewer goals
00:24 — The myth of “more goals = more success” 
01:12 — The three traps that sabotage goal achievement
01:29 — Trap 1: Direction Trap
02:08 — Trap 2: Reactive Trap 
02:26 — Trap 3: Environment Trap 
02:44 — The three shifts to avoid these traps.
03:04 — Shift 1: From direction to strategy 
03:27 — The 80/20 Principle and how a small effort yields most results. 
04:06 — Action step: Write down 10 goals, pick the one with the biggest impact. 
04:27 — Story: Brian Tracy’s transformation through writing down goals. 
04:50 — Handwriting your top 10 goals daily for 30 days is a game changer. 
05:07 — Shift 2: From outcome-based to identity-based thinking. 
05:27 — Why identity-based thinking gives you more control and motivation. 
05:52 — Example: James Clear on building identity through daily action. 
06:09 — Internalizing identity motivates consistent action.
06:27 — Shift 3: From willpower to environment 
06:46 — Decision fatigue: Why you doom scroll or order takeout after a long day. 
07:04 — Reduce friction for bad habits, increase friction for good ones. 
07:25 — Practical tips: Design your phone and pantry to support your goals. 
08:26 — Recap: Focus on one goal, embrace identity, design your environment. 
09:06 — Closing: What will you do today to change your environment or focus? 

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Embracing the journey of diversifying income streams entails prioritizing independence, flexibility, and fulfillment alongside established careers.

Through my videos here on this channel, my podcast Productive Insights Podcast and via my blog, I share strategies and tools to help you find financial freedom and build a life you love.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to the productive insights podcast
where you can learn how tosystemize, automate, and scale
your business via the Internet.To access previous episodes and
useful productivity tips, go towww.productiveinsights.com. Now
here's your host, Ash Roy.

Speaker 2 (00:27):
I've been working with entrepreneurs for over a
decade and here's what shockedme. Most successful
entrepreneurs I know don't havemore goals. They have fewer of
them but they tend to focus onone goal at a time, they master
it and then they move on. So inthis video I'm going to tell you
the three key obstacles toachieving your goals and what

(00:48):
you can do differently startingtoday. Grab a coffee, let's go
for a walk and talk about it.
In today's world where moreseems to be better, we're
tempted to think that more goalsequals more success. But the
opposite is true. Havinginterviewed productivity experts
like James Clear, Brian Tracy,and even an assistant professor

(01:09):
of psychiatry from HarvardMedical School Doctor. Srini
Pillai, an accomplishedneuroscientist. It turns out
that less is more when it comesto goal setting and achievement.
So here's what typically happenswith goals. We get really
excited about changing somethingin our lives. Maybe we decide to
get fit or we decide we want tobe a better writer. We write it

(01:30):
down, we make a plan and for thefirst few days we are on fire
and then the motivation drops.Maybe we miss a day, maybe we
miss two days in a row.
Now we feel like it's not reallyworth pursuing that goal anymore
and before we know it we'vegiven up. We think we don't have
enough willpower and then webeat ourselves up. But you see,
I don't think it's a willpowerproblem. I think it's a system

(01:52):
problem. And in the next fewminutes I'm going to show you a
system that helps you avoid thethree typical traps that we tend
to fall into that stops us frombeing our best selves and
exceeding our goals.
Let's head that way. The threetraps are the direction trap,
the reactive trap, and theenvironment trap. Let's talk
about each one of these. So thedirection trap is about not

(02:15):
having clear priorities. We tendto have many goals and we focus
our energy in every possibledirection and we don't get
traction on anything.
And when we have too many goals,we tend to fall into the
reactive trap, which basicallyis about having no clear point
of focus and so we tend to feellike everything's urgent and

(02:36):
instead of being proactive andchoosing how to spend our time,
we become reactive and end upputting out a whole lot of fires
but not really getting anywhere.And the third trap is the
environment trap. Because weoften believe that our willpower
will save us, we have a tendencyto lean on that way too much but
as the day progresses yourwillpower tends to fade and your

(02:57):
decision fatigue starts kickingin. And this is why your
environment really matters. Ifyou have an environment that's
conducive to being focused,you're far more likely succeed
at the fewer goals that youchoose to pursue.
Okay, so now that we understandthe three traps, let's talk
about the three shifts you needto make to avoid them. Shift
number one, from direction tostrategy. First ask yourself,

(03:19):
what is the one thing I can dotoday that will either eliminate
the need for a lot of the otherthings I need to do and slash or
make them redundant? You see,the eightytwenty principle tells
us that approximately 20% of oureffort delivers approximately
80% of our results. But here'sthe interesting thing that Perry
Marshall told me in episode oneeighty six.

(03:39):
We'll link to that video in thedescription below. The eighty
twenty rule is fractal. So 20%of 20% is 4%, and 8080% of 80%
is 64%. So 4% of your effort was64% of your results. And you
take that one level further andyou'll find 0.8% of your effort
delivers 51.2% of your results.
So the question is, what is that0.8% of your effort that will

(04:02):
deliver 51.2% of your results?One good example of this, if
you're trying to scale abusiness, is spending a lot of
time on hiring great qualityteam members and building a
strong team culture. Becausewhen you make the effort to hire
great people and encourage andincentivize them, then they will
do as good or better work thanyou could ever imagine doing

(04:23):
yourself. Another great exampleis building great systems in
your business and that is anextension of the people in your
business. Now what I recommendyou do is write down your 10
goals by hand and then pick onegoal that is going to have the
maximum impact on all of yourobjectives and focus fully on
that.
The power of writing down yourgoals by hand is often

(04:45):
underestimated. Brian Tracyexplained exactly how writing
down his goals helped him totransform his life. He was
sleeping on the floor of hisfriend's apartment and he ended
up accomplishing almosteverything that he hoped for and
more. If you'd like to watch thefull conversation with Brian
Tracy, check out the link in thedescription below. You see the
power of writing things down ispretty incredible because it
embeds a lot of the deeplearning into your subconscious

(05:09):
mind and your mind is oftenworking on the goal even when
you're not consciously engagingwith it.
So handwriting your top 10 goalsevery day for thirty days can be
an absolute game changer. Butremember, you're only focusing
on the most important goal thatwill give you the maximum
possible impact. A greatquestion to ask yourself after
you've written those 10 goalsdown is what's my one thing?

(05:31):
Shift number two, from outcomebased thinking to identity based
thinking. Most of our goals tendto be outcome focused.
I want to write a book. I wantto lose weight. I want to become
a great YouTuber. But typicallyfocusing on an outcome puts the
locus of control outside ofourselves. It somehow takes from
the agency.

(05:51):
When we shift from outcome basedthinking to identity based
thinking, the locus of controlshifts from outside of ourselves
to inside. For example, insteadof saying, I want to write a
book, if we said, I am a writerwho writes every day, then we
are voting for the identity ofbeing a writer every day that we
write. And each day we write, weare casting another vote towards

(06:14):
building that identity. JamesClear explained this beautifully
in my conversation with him,which I'll link to in the
description below. If youhaven't read the book Atomic
Habits by James Clear, highlyrecommend it.
I'll link to that in thedescription below as well. If
you want to lose weight insteadof saying I want to lose 10
kilos by the end of this year,say I am an athlete who
exercises every day. When youflip your thinking from outcome

(06:35):
based thinking to identity basedthinking, you're internalizing
that identity and reinforcingthat identity every time you
take action toward that identityand this further motivates you
to take more action. I highlyrecommend trying this. I found
it to be very effective.
Let's head down that way and wecan talk about shift number
three. Okay shift number threefrom willpower to environment.

(06:57):
You see willpower is a limitedresource. It's like a muscle. As
you use it through the day, itgets tired.
It's called decision fatigue. Atthe end of the day, after
countless decisions, yourwillpower is depleted. I mean,
think about it. That's thereason at the end of a long day,
you reach out for your phone anddoomscroll instead of focusing
on that passion project that youreally want to move forward or

(07:20):
you use that phone to order someUber Eats instead of cooking
yourself a quick healthy mealthat's going to move you closer
to your long term health goals.Why?
Because it's easier, becausethere's less friction, because
you've set your environment upto reduce the friction to
accessing that stuff on yourphone or to accessing the junk
food in your pantry. So you seethe solution here isn't to fight

(07:44):
harder, it's to design yourenvironment to give yourself the
best chance of success. If youreduce the number of times you
reach out for your phone, you'reless likely to reach out for
that Uber Eats app on your phoneto order takeaway and you're
more likely to actually dosomething useful with your time
and make yourself a nice meal.If you don't have that junk food
sitting in your pantry, you'reless likely to eat rubbish and

(08:07):
you're more likely to make theeffort to make yourself a
healthy sandwich. Same goes withyour phone.
If you design your phone betterand you don't have a whole lot
of apps sitting on that firstpage of your phone, you're less
likely to engage in destructivebehaviors. I highly checking out
my conversation with James Clearwhere he talks about how he
designs his phone to minimizeaccess to distracting apps and

(08:29):
to maximize friction when itcomes to a poor digital
environment. He explains how hedesigns his phone screens. He
talks about how you can set youriPhone to grayscale mode and
lots more. Link in thedescription below.
So here are some quick tips toincrease friction around habits
you don't want to cultivate. Putyour phone in another room while
you're working. Don't buy junkfood when you're in the store.

(08:51):
If you do buy it, keep it out ofreach and keep the healthy food
at eye level in your pantry.Clear your workspace, make it
free of clutter.
Rewire your mornings. Keep anotebook next to your bed and
write down your top 10 goalsthat you want to achieve and
then circle the one thing youwant to focus on that day that
is going to make as many of theother goals redundant as
possible. Choose oneenvironmental tweak that's going

(09:13):
to help you to succeed. Okay. Soquick recap.
Focus on your top 10 goals andwrite them down physically in a
book every day for thirty daysand circle the one thing that
you're going to do that is goingto move you closest towards your
objectives and make the othergoals relatively redundant. The
next idea is to shift fromoutcome based thinking to

(09:34):
identity based thinking. And inthat same book, write down what
identity you want to embrace. Sofor example, if you want to be a
great YouTuber, write down, I'ma YouTuber and I create one
piece of content every day. Andthe third thing is to design
your environment to minimizefriction when it comes to habits
you want to embrace and maximizefriction.
So it makes it really hard foryou to cultivate habits that are

(09:56):
going to hurt you in the longterm. So let me know in the
comments below, what are yougoing to do today to either
change your environment, toembrace a new identity, or to
focus on one thing that willhelp you get to your goals? Hey,
guys. Thank you so much forwatching this video. Ciao for
now.
And I'll see you in the nextone.

Speaker 1 (10:17):
Thanks for listening to the productive insights
podcast. You can find all thelinks in the show notes below
this episode onproductiveinsights.com. You can
also ask questions in thecomment section that Ash
personally answers. How can Ashhelp you today?